better toslink cables

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i am now a firm believer that even the quality of toslink cables impacts the fidelity of sound. i realized this because after swapping my audio research toslink to a cheap no brand one without the thinnest rubber skin, the sound suddenly became muddy and veiled. having noticed this, i immediately ordered a supposedly more nicely built cable with japanese import fiber, only to notice it to be having a too bright and fatiguing presentation. so i ended up moving the computer closer to the dac and reinstalling the audio research cable since the whole trouble was for the equipment location distances. now the sound is back to what i accept as the 'norm'. 3 different toslinks, 3 different sound qualities, all digital. weird. why? have you guys noticed this with your fiber optics? if so what was the best choice you settled with?
 
It all matters

I have heard differences in all four Toslink cables I have tried. Although I must say you need a really resolving system to hear the differences. But when you do it is big.

My old favorite was the Van den Hul Optocoupler 2, but now I favor the Wireworld Starlight 6. Either can be used in your system depending on other cables and other factors and can be very good indeed. And not too expensive as cables go.
 
Toslink receivers have rise and fall times that are different and more importantly change with signal level unequally. The slicing point is not at 50% of the waveform either.

This means that changing cables or even bending a cable is going to cause large changes in duty cycle and is likely to be audible

Toslink plastic has a 1mm diameter core, much larger than other types and capture far more light from the LED, so over short lengths, far more light reaches the receiver
The higher bandwidth of glass is negligible over a couple of metres
 
This means that changing cables or even bending a cable is going to cause large changes in duty cycle and is likely to be audible

this sounds completely like a snake oil advertisement but i know from first hand experience that it is very true. would i be free of having to worry about bending the cable once i switch my setup to USB based? i'm planning on getting a new dac and this would be the chance to purchase a usb soundcard with a decent cable. i've heard that the length also affects usb cables so how short of it should i get?
 
I used to design fibre optic video and data links at GEC. We made our own receivers as the Toslink and Honeywell receivers were so bad.

Wire cables do not have nearly so many problems with gentle bending and have very predictable insertion loss

At higher speed than we need for audio IR LEDs have a significant tail at turn off, that smears the data
 
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